Walton v. Oliver’s Empirical Analysis
1892
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 1973
10 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Hurt v. Salisbury · Coleman v. Coleman
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The statute only provides that the existence of the corporation shall date from the time of filing the charter, and the certificate of the secretary of state shall be evidence of the time of such filing. (Gen. Stat. 1889, § 1166.) The statute is silent as to the organization. The rule is well established that a corporation must have a full and complete organization and existence as an entity, and in accordance with the law to which it owes its origin, before it can assume its franchise or enter into any kind of contract or transact any business; and whatever be the mode prescribed by the act of incorporation, a substantial compliance with all the provisions of the law under which it is created is required before the corporation can be said to have such an existence as will entitle it to do business. . . . Now it is conceded in this case that nothing was done to perfect the organization after the charter was filed. A corporation cannot act without officers and agents, and it is powerless to do anything until its incorporators or promoters give it the means whereby it can act. . . . While, in this case, the charter was filed with the secretary of state, the corporation had no officers outside of the directors named for the first year. No portion of the capital stock had been subscribed and no books opened, as required by ¶ 1173 of the General Statutes of 1889. In fact, nothing had been done to complete the preliminary business of organizing the corporation. We do not understan”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Murdock v. Lamb““We do not understand that a corporation can proceed to the transaction of business without any portion of its capital stock being subscribed or paid.” (p. 113.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.